William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 4, 1999)

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-	The third Gospel is from the,	0:08
	the third reading is from the Gospel	0:10
	according to Saint Matthew,	0:13
	the 28th chapter:	0:15
	After the Sabbath as the first day	0:18
	of the week was dawning,	0:21
	Mary Magdelene and the other Mary	0:23
	went to see the tomb.	0:25
	And suddenly there was a great earthquake	0:27
	for an angel of the Lord descending	0:31
	from Heaven, came and rolled back the stone	0:33
	and sat on it.	0:37
	His appearance was like lightening	0:39
	and his clothing was as white as snow,	0:42
	for fear of him the guards shook	0:46
	and became like dead men.	0:49
	But the angel said to the women,	0:52
	"Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus	0:55
	"who was crucified.	0:59
	"He is not here, for He has been raised	1:01
	"as He said.	1:05
	"Come and see the place where he lay.	1:07
	"Then go quickly and tell His disciples,	1:11
	"'He has been raise from the dead and	1:14
	"'indeed He is going ahead of you to Galilee,	1:17
	"'there you will see Him.'	1:20
	"This is my message for you."	1:23
	So they left the tomb quickly	1:26
	with fear and great joy	1:29
	and ran to tell His disciples.	1:31
	This is the Word of the Lord.	1:35
-	Thanks be to God.	1:38
-	You can learn a lot about Easter,	1:45
	by comparing the ways	1:48
	that the different Gospel writers speak of Easter.	1:50
	And you can learn a lot about ourselves and Easter as well.	1:54
	John says	2:00
	that the disciples went out to the tomb	2:03
	on Easter and found that it was empty.	2:07
	And then they went back home.	2:11
	They go back home?	2:17
	Reminds you of Luke's story, those two disciples	2:21
	going to Emmaus.	2:23
	A stranger shows up and says,	2:24
	"Why are you looking so sad?"	2:27
	and they said, "Well, some of our women,	2:28
	"some of these hysterical women came back	2:31
	"from the cemetery and said 'Jesus was raised	2:33
	"'from the dead' but we'd already	2:37
	"planned to have dinner at Emmaus	2:39
	"and you know how hard it is to change	2:40
	"your reservations once you get these made."	2:42
	A man is raised from the dead	2:47
	and you can't cancel lunch.	2:49
	How dumb are these disciples?	2:51
	So my friend Stanley Hauerwas,	2:55
	in conversation with poor Marcus Borg	2:58
	of the errant Jesus Seminar says:	3:01
	When Marcus thinks of Easter,	3:05
	he seems to think the disciples of Jesus	3:06
	had some kind of inner experience.	3:09
	Maybe they said, "Wasn't it great	3:14
	"being with Jesus when He was here.	3:17
	"Didn't you just love those stories and those sermons?	3:19
	"You know, just thinking about it	3:22
	"almost seems like He's still here.	3:26
	"Yeah if you just think about it,	3:31
	"it's like He's still here.	3:32
	"Let's all close our eyes and believe real hard,	3:33
	"maybe He's still here, okay?"	3:36
	Stanley says, "Hey Jesus Seminar.	3:40
	"You need to read the Scriptures.	3:43
	"These disciples were not that creative."	3:46
	These were not imaginative minds we're dealing with here.	3:49
	They were the sort of people	3:54
	who could go out in the morning,	3:55
	see an empty tomb and not let it spoil lunch.	3:56
	(crowd laughing)	4:00
	You don't get the idea of the bodily resurrection of Jesus	4:01
	out of people with the kind of imaginations	4:04
	and intelligence of Simon Peter.	4:07
	In short, in a way these disciples	4:11
	were just like us.	4:16
	People like us are the sort of folk who believe	4:21
	that you can have a resurrection	4:24
	and still go back to the world just like it was yesterday.	4:28
	We want to have Easter, but we still want to	4:35
	have our world unrocked by resurrection.	4:37
	We're amazingly well adjusted to the same old dead world.	4:43
	We just hate to let go of that.	4:50
	And I think that helps explain why	4:55
	when Matthew tells the story of Easter,	4:57
	Matthew says "It was like the whole earth shook."	5:00
	Luke does Easter as a meal on a Sunday evening	5:06
	with the risen Christ.	5:09
	John has Christ encounter Mary at the garden.	5:10
	But Matthew, Matthew as you heard does Easter	5:14
	as earthquake with doors shaking off tombs	5:19
	and dead people walking the streets	5:22
	and a stone rolled away by the ruckus.	5:24
	And this impudent angel sitting on top of the stone.	5:27
	I've been through an earthquake.	5:31
	Even though I'm not from L.A.	5:34
	I was preaching in Alaska and during the middle	5:37
	of my sermon the whole place started to shake.	5:40
	And the earth heaved for a moment	5:43
	and it seemed to last a lifetime.	5:45
	And that little church just shook.	5:47
	And those Alaskan Methodists just sat there	5:52
	like it was another day at the office.	5:54
	(crowd laughing)	5:56
	The only response was from a woman down front	5:58
	who looked up and said, "Look at that,	6:00
	"the light fixtures fell the last one."	6:03
	(crowd laughing)	6:05
	And I ended my sermon as quickly as possible,	6:06
	and afterwards with the pastor	6:09
	at lunch I asked him,	6:11
	"What the heck would it take to get	6:14
	"this congregation's attention?	6:16
	"I'd hate to have to preach to them every Sunday."	6:18
	Matthew says	6:22
	Easter is an earthquake	6:25
	and the whole world shook.	6:29
	Oh, we modern people like to explain things.	6:31
	Particularly things that intrude on our lives	6:37
	for which we have no good past experience	6:39
	to put it in context.	6:42
	And so we do that to Easter.	6:44
	And so one scholar says, "Maybe Jesus	6:45
	"was in some kind of drugged coma.	6:48
	"And after three days he came back,	6:50
	"or maybe you can chalk up Easter to kind of	6:52
	collective hysteria among his disciples."	6:55
	But you can't explain resurrection.	7:00
	If you notice the Gospel writers mainly show	7:04
	the reaction of people to Easter.	7:09
	Resurrection explains us.	7:13
	The truth of Jesus at Easter tells on the faces	7:17
	of his befuddled disciples.	7:21
	Not one of them expected or even wanted Easter.	7:23
	In fact you will notice the women are filled with joy	7:27
	but also fear.	7:30
	Why fear?	7:33
	Well death, defeat,	7:37
	while regrettable are so utterly explainable.	7:40
	"It was a good campaign while it lasted,	7:46
	"but we didn't get Him elected Messiah."	7:48
	Oh death, death is it.	7:50
	"We had hoped, but you gotta face facts.	7:55
	"You want some lunch?"	7:58
	The world is in a tight death grip of such facts.	8:00
	All that lives dies, fact.	8:06
	The good get it in the end, face facts.	8:08
	It may be a rather somber world at time we grieve over it	8:11
	but it is our world where things stay fixed.	8:14
	And things are predictable.	8:19
	And what dies stays that way.	8:21
	And there are few surprises	8:24
	and we learn to like it that way.	8:27
	But Easter is about God.	8:33
	It's not about the resuscitation of a dead body,	8:35
	that's resuscitation not resurrection.	8:38
	It's not about immortality of the soul	8:41
	like going on and on with Della Reese.	8:45
	That's Plato not Jesus.	8:51
	It's not about some divine spark within us	8:54
	that just kind of keeps on glowing we'll all remember	8:56
	him in our memories.	9:00
	No, it's about God.	9:01
	But God not usually as God is presented here	9:03
	to modernity God is an empathetic	9:06
	but ineffective good friend.	9:09
	Some kind of inner personal experience	9:11
	that helps you make it through the week.	9:13
	No, this is God that steps in and creates a way	9:14
	when there is no way.	9:19
	A God that makes war on evil	9:21
	until evil is undone.	9:25
	A God who raises Jesus from the dead	9:26
	just to prove who is in charge here.	9:30
	I don't know this for sure,	9:35
	but I think that that angel you know,	9:38
	the angel from the Easter earthquake,	9:41
	that perched on that rock that was rolled away	9:44
	from the tomb, I think it is the very same angel	9:47
	that you met back in Matthew chapter one.	9:51
	Remember that angel.	9:56
	Shook Joseph awake one night with the news	9:57
	that his fiance was pregnant.	10:00
	Talk about an earthquake.	10:03
	(crowd lauging)	10:05
	See my point.	10:07
	God did on Easter in invading the tomb	10:09
	what God did on Christmas in invading a virgin's womb.	10:13
	God made a way when we thought there was no way.	10:17
	God took charge, the same angel who was sent	10:21
	to Joseph saying, "Wake up, name the baby Emmanuel,	10:25
	"God with us."	10:29
	Was maybe the same angel who went to say to the women,	10:32
	"Wake up, don't be afraid He isn't here.	10:36
	"He's been raised."	10:40
	Little Emmanuel, little God with us grew up	10:42
	and He got crucified and made the whole earth shake.	10:45
	And now, even now, He isn't here.	10:49
	He's on the move to take back the world.	10:51
	On the cross the world did everything it could to Jesus.	10:55
	And at Easter, God did all God could do to the world.	11:00
	And the earth shook.	11:06
	And you don't explain that.	11:09
	You witness it.	11:12
	That's all the angel asked the women to do.	11:13
	"Go tell somebody, witness."	11:16
	Why would Jesus come back to His first disciples?	11:19
	Because they were the ones who could	11:23
	best recognize the risen Christ	11:26
	was none other than the crucified Jesus.	11:29
	Crucifixion wasn't just an unfortunate mistake	11:33
	in the Roman legal system,	11:35
	the first century Judean equivalent	11:37
	to the O.J. Simpson fiasco.	11:39
	Crucifixion was what we know	11:41
	and crucifixion is what we do.	11:45
	Crucifixion is the inevitable, predictable result	11:48
	of saying the things Jesus said.	11:51
	And doing the things Jesus did.	11:53
	And being the Savior, Jesus was.	11:55
	You don't say things like Jesus said to rich	11:58
	and powerful people and get away with it.	12:01
	This is what the world always does to people	12:06
	who threaten the world.	12:09
	So just face facts.	12:13
	But on Easter, God inserted a new fact.	12:18
	God took that cruel cross	12:24
	and made it into a sign of triumph.	12:26
	God, the same God at the beginning	12:29
	of our story, made light from darkness,	12:32
	a world from a void.	12:36
	The God took the worst that we could do,	12:39
	all of our death dealing, crucifixion doings	12:42
	and led them out toward life.	12:46
	And the world shook.	12:50
	A new world was thereby offered.	12:53
	Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples	12:56
	who had forsaken him.	12:59
	And in that moment we realized the world	13:02
	is not about vengeance.	13:04
	It's about forgiveness.	13:08
	And the earth shook.	13:12
	Jesus picked up a piece of bread	13:15
	and He ate it.	13:17
	And when He did the disciples could see the nail prints	13:18
	in His hands.	13:21
	And in that moment we realized the world is not	13:23
	about violence and death,	13:25
	it's about life, and the earth shook.	13:27
	Last week I heard interviewed the woman	13:34
	whose daughter was brutally murdered	13:36
	on a school ground in Arkansas.	13:40
	And she was talking about what a horrible year	13:44
	she had had.	13:46
	And she said, "My life was taken away from me	13:47
	"that day, I have been filled with this great sense	13:51
	"of fear and foreboding that I just can't shake.	13:56
	"Let me tell all of you other parents you better love	14:00
	"your little ones, this world is an unpredictable	14:03
	"at times terrible place."	14:07
	And she said, "I had my world destroyed	14:11
	"that day on that school ground."	14:15
	She's had her world rocked,	14:20
	by death and she'll never be quite the same.	14:23
	Well on Easter, we've had our world rocked by life.	14:29
	And how can we be the same?	14:36
	When that stone was rolled away we got a glimpse	14:39
	of a new world where death doesn't have the last word.	14:43
	A shaken world where injustice is ultimately	14:48
	put right and innocent suffering is vindicated	14:52
	by a powerful God whose on the side of the suffering.	14:55
	The women came out to the cemetery that morning	14:59
	to write one more chapter in the long story,	15:01
	the sad story of death's ascendancy.	15:05
	One more episode, you know it from the morning paper	15:09
	about how the good always get it in the end.	15:12
	And then let's all go back home.	15:15
	This is the way the world ends.	15:20
	Not with a bang but a whimper of resignation.	15:22
	When we just all go back home and settle back in.	15:25
	With death's dark victory.	15:30
	And then the earth heaved.	15:34
	An angel appeared,	15:38
	the stone was rolled away.	15:39
	Caesar's soldiers shook, the angel plopped himself	15:41
	down on the stone in one final act of impudence	15:46
	and defiance and said to the women,	15:50
	"Don't be afraid.	15:53
	"You're looking for Jesus, He isn't here.	15:55
	"He's gone on."	15:58
	And then that angel turned to the soldiers	16:02
	and to Satan and to all the death dealers	16:04
	of all time and said,	16:08
	"Be afraid.	16:12
	"Everything your world is built on is being shaken."	16:14
	And nobody went back home the same.	16:20

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 4, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:45. Sermon end time: 16:25.
The preacher highlights the significance of the Easter event, reminding the congregation that the world and their personal lives are not the same after the resurrection of Jesus; he encourages the church to live with apocalyptic hope. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “You can’t explain resurrection. If you notice, the Gospel writers mainly show the reaction of people to Easter. Resurrection explains us. The truth of Jesus at Easter tells on the faces of his befuddled disciples.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4wd3qg9q

Date:

April 4, 1999

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Easter

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 28:1-10

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0953
ref10063_6tw
uachapelsermaud
duke:321020
dcrau001597
ark:/87924/r4wd3qg9q
ca94993c-a37f-4800-b11a-d09b00d0fb7c

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 4, 1999)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 9:00 am (April 4, 1999)

Duke University Archives

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William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 4, 1999)

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